Condition monitoring of a continuous knife assembly of an agricultural harvester
AssigneeCNH Industrial America LLC
InventorsCory Hunt, Pieter Van Overschelde, Jethro Martin
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A header for an agricultural harvester including a continuous loop knife and a sensor for sensing conditions of a plurality of knives of the continuous loop knife in increments comprising non-adjacent groups of one or more knives, whereby substantially all of the plurality of knives is sensed after a plurality of cycles of the continuous knife past the sensor. With the header so equipped, a timely determination of wear or damage to the knives in a loop knife cutting system can be made, so that damaged knives may be replaced before significant deterioration of the cutting performance occurs.
Claims18
A header of an agricultural harvester comprising:
- a continuous loop knife assembly comprising a plurality of knives attached to an endless flexible member;
- a sensor that senses a condition of the plurality of knives in increments comprising a plurality of non-adjacent groups of the plurality of knives, wherein each non-adjacent group of the plurality of non-adjacent groups comprises two or more adjacent knives of the plurality of knives, and substantially an entirety of the plurality of knives is sensed after a plurality of cycles of the continuous loop knife assembly past the sensor;
- and
- a motor operatively engaged with the endless flexible member for moving the plurality of knives past the sensor.
A method of monitoring a condition of a plurality of movable knives in a continuous loop knife assembly carried by a header of an agricultural harvester, the method comprising:
- sensing, by a sensor, a condition of the plurality of movable knives in increments comprising a plurality of non-adjacent groups of the plurality of movable knives, wherein each non-adjacent group of the plurality of non-adjacent groups comprises two or more adjacent movable knives of the plurality of movable knives, and substantially an entirety of the plurality of movable knives is sensed after a plurality of cycles of the plurality of movable knives past the sensor, and
- displaying, by a monitor in communication with the sensor, the condition of the plurality of movable knives sensed by the sensor.
A header of an agricultural harvester comprising:
- a continuous loop knife assembly comprising X knives attached to an endless flexible member;
- a sensor that senses a condition of the X knives according to a knife sampling interval Y;
- and
- a motor operatively engaged with the endless flexible member that moves the X knives past the sensor,
- wherein X is an integer, wherein Y is an integer equal to any integer not equal to X or a factor of X, excluding 1, and wherein X/Y has a remainder that does not share a prime number factor with Y.
A method of monitoring conditions of X movable knives in a continuous loop knife assembly carried by a header of an agricultural harvester comprising:
- sensing, by a sensor, a condition of the X movable knives according to a knife sampling interval Y;
- and
- displaying, by a monitor in communication with the sensor, the condition of the X movable knives sensed by the sensor according to the knife sampling interval Y,
- wherein X is an integer, wherein Y is an integer equal to any integer not equal to X or a factor of X, excluding 1, and wherein X/Y has a remainder that does not share a prime factor with Y.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.